Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/281

Rh the convent large and dreary, and the wind howling lugubriously over the plains, he was awakened at night by a deep, sepulchral voice, apparently close at his ear, tolling forth these words:

Exceedingly startled, he sprang up, and opened the door of his cell. A dim lamp faintly illuminated the long vaulted galleries, and the monks, like shadows, were gliding to midnight prayer. In the dreariness of the night, with the solemn words sounding in his ears like a warning knell, he came to the satisfactory conclusion that all was vanity, and to the determination that the very next day he would retire from the world, join this holy brotherhood, and bind himself to be a Carmelite friar, for life. The day brought counsel, the cheerful sunbeams dispelled the gloom, even within the old convent, and his scruples of conscience melted away.

There are old villages and old churches in this neighborhood that would delight an antiquary. In the churchyard of the village of San Andres is the most beautiful weeping ash I ever saw. We took shelter from the sun yesterday under its gigantic shadow, and lay there as under a green vault. We saw to-day, near another solitary old church, one of the Indian oven-baths, the temezcallis, built of bricks, in which there is neither alteration nor improvement